Hi Johnny
Well you're going about it the right way: being a genuine contributing member of the community first and foremost. Thank you for being open about your membership of the site, I appreciate it.
Let me explain our position and how we arrived at it...
Too many can treat a site like ours as a free advertising resource and do drive by promo posts. While we do allow that when you promote your own music, if it is a commercial service we ask that the advertising board is used for such promo posts. That keeps it tidy and it's what members asked us to do so they aren't drowned in spam, believe me, when we don't have such restrictions very, very quickly a higher and higher concentration of promo posts happens. It's amazing what some people will consider acceptable just to get a link to their site.
As long as it is a music related commercial service you can also add some details and a link to your member profile. You can add links to your personal music, your artist pages, your noncommercial music blog and personal blog to your board signature (displayed at the bottom of all your posts) and on your member profile. On the boards in general you can include links to sites you have no affiliation with as long as it is on-topic and justified. We also do not accept promotional links to sites that have a community similar to Songstuff, ie the member has to be unaffiliated to that site.
That might sound like a lot of ifs and buts, but the reason is about the health of any online community. Online communities rely on members taking part, and that requires members to spend time there. Every link has the potential to take people away from the community and if there are too many, then people are presented with link after link that would take them somewhere else, and that undermines the community, activity goes down and the community withers. Additionally, members have to sift through more and more content that is promotional in nature, and we know just how much people like being bombarded with advertisements. It doesn't matter how much great content is created by staff in members if it can all get drowned by off topic posting.
Some sites don't allow any links. We decided to draw a line. Allowing ontopic unaffiliated links seemed valuable to members, so we allowed that. Allowing them to promote their music also seemed fair. The same goes for their non-commercial blog or site as long as they are personal in nature or music related. Allowing off topic promotional posts was definately out, the same goes for objectionable content. The other main one is music related, commercial sites. There we decided that the privilege for posting any link to such an affiliated site would only be given to members who genuinely took part in the community and who in all likliehood understand the importance of the community being healthy and thriving.
Lastly, our staff go to a lot of effort to promote Songstuff, and to do it ethically regarding other sites. We don't do that so that dirve by posters and spammers can get a free ride, and do what we ourselves will not do to other sites. We do it for the good of this community and it's members, and to be fair to the sites we promote on, sites who have no doubt also gone to a lot of effort to build their site. In otherwords we practice what we preach, adhering to the rules of wherever we promote, paying where necessary.
Currently we don't have paid advertisements on Songstuff. Even if that changes adverts would be few. That is because we respect our members right not to be bombarded at every turn with adverts. We do, on occasions, work with other sites.
You asked! lol I'd rather give you a decent explanation than a simple rule. If you aren't sure of anything at all just ask myself or another member of staff and we will be happy to help.
Cheers
John
.png.bc839067beeac7e0c9092f7c7c3ef9de.png)
